


Solder

by someinstant



Series: Foundry [6]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Complicated Relationships, Episode Related, F/M, Pining, Politics, Post battle of Winterfell, Post-Episode: s08e04 The Last of the Starks, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-04-05 07:26:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19043899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/someinstant/pseuds/someinstant
Summary: Lady Stark looks towards the heart tree, towards the red-carved eyes staring endlessly at Winterfell.  “Power is odd, isn’t it,” she says, absent.  “Someone says the words, and others act as though they matter, and suddenly they do."





	Solder

**Author's Note:**

> So you should probably know that I really love thinking about power. A lot.
> 
> Look, _The West Wing_ was formative for me, okay?

The men in the smith don’t speak to him now, beyond apologies. Don’t say much of anything when he’s in earshot, not even oaths.  Gendry doesn’t mind; the fever burned through his strength like straw, and it takes double the usual concentration to hold the iron steady as he strikes, red layers curling with each blow of the hammer.  By the end of a day’s work, his arms shake like a strippling’s and his leg protests every stair in the keep.

He had tried to return to his bedroll in this smith’s quarters after his conversation with Wolkan, but Bertey had laughed in his face and told him, lord or no lord, he would be a fool to turn away a good bed.  Gendry supposes she is right. He has, after all, spent his share of nights sleeping rough. And as no one has brought up the subject of wages, he’ll take the fine room and bed in trade until they do.

He starts with nails.  Outside the forge, Winterfell is slowly rising from her sickbed, shaking off splintered doors and beams broken by the weight of the dead.  The mangled stone curtain gapes, awkward, like a fighter’s toothless maw after a beating, and the masons stand in the rubble and argue about how best to patch it.  The great courtyard echoes with the sound of hammers and saws and chisels beginning at first light, and the work continues well after sundown. And so Gendry starts with nails.

“Keep the shoulder steady against the edge, and draw it out,” he hears Mott say from across the years and whatever death he met.  “Don’t insult the iron with idle strikes. Every hit has a purpose, boy.”

He drops another finished nail into the bucket, the squared shank gleaming in the dim light of the forge.  Catches Polym watching him with his one good eye as he does, and raises his eyebrows. “Got something to say?” Gendry asks, mild.

“Sorry, milord,” Polym says, and then, “No, milord.”  

“You’re a shit liar,” Gendry says, and pulls at the rope for the bellows.  It’s still not catching cleanly. He thinks there’s a problem with the fold on the lungs, but the tanner is dead, and his boy is twelve and still learning the trade.  They’ll make do.

Polym watches as he heats the rod to a hot white and brings it to the anvil’s edge. “You’re wasted ‘ere, making nails,” he says in a rush. “You’re Lord of Storm’s End. We ‘eard the Dragon Queen say,” he insists. “You ‘ave a castle, and lands, and you’re the son of the king!”

“Aye,” Gendry says, and strikes.  A clean hit, and turn, and strike again.  The iron goes red, then grey, and he chases it down with his hammer.  Draws it out. “What of it? My father was the king,” he says. “And my mum worked in a tavern, and died, and I’ve been smithing since I was nine.  I don’t know castles and land,” he says, breaking the shank off and moving it to the header. Three quick strikes, and the nail is finished. “I know iron,” he says. Gestures to the nail, black and silver and ready to burn anyone fool enough to touch it.  “Words on some parchment won’t make me a good lord.”

“You could learn,” Polym says.  “Can’t be that ‘ard. Plenty of fools are lords,” he says, and Gendry snorts.

“True,” he says, and returns to the bellows. “But if they’re fools,” he says, “perhaps they shouldn’t be.”

* * *

It’s hinges and linchpins, next.  Latches for windows. Great twisting handles for the new gates: he layers scarf joints one on top of the other, and the iron becomes the thick moving fur of a direwolf at hunt.

“That’s fine, that is,” Polym says, approving.  He still ducks his head when he remembers Gendry’s title, but as the days pass it happens less often.  “Who was your master?”

“Tobho Mott,” Gendry says, and bites at his lip, twisting the stick of charcoal between his fingers.  The masons want anchor plates, to shore the rebuilt walls with iron. It’s easy enough work, but it won’t be hidden in the stone, and the finishes should fit Winterfell.  He isn’t sure about the design. “He was Qohorik, and a right arse.  Deft hand with a hammer and a whip.  Knew what he was about, though,” he says, absent, and then, “What do the leaves on the weirwood trees look like?”

“Oh,” says Polym, and holds his hand out for the charcoal.  Gendry gives it over. “That would be good,” Polym says, and scratches out a leaf with five points onto the rough wood of the workbench.  He tilts his head. “Anchor point would be--”

Gendry spreads his hand and taps just under the third knuckle of his middle finger.  “Here,” he says. “If we make them a handspan.”

“Yeah,” says Polym, and turns so his one eye can meet Gendry’s.  “Qohorik? No wonder you’re good,” he says.

Gendry shrugs.  “Mott was better.  His silverwork made men cry, and he could spell steel to colors,” he says.  Polym scoffs, and Gendry says, “He could. It weren’t paint or enamel-- you could punch a hole in a helm he made, and the color was all through, worked right into the steel.”  He traces a finger along Polym’s sketch and says, “Wish I could do these in red, but I’ve no idea how he managed it.”

“That’s too bad,” a woman’s voice says, and Polym bows from his shoulders, saying, “Milady,” reverent.

Gendry turns, and says, “Lady Stark.”

She is nothing like her sister. Gendry has known this since before he stepped foot in Winterfell; it is hardly a surprise, and wasn’t, the first time he saw her in the Great Hall. When they were on the run in the Riverlands, Arya would sometimes mention her, nose wrinkling as she described her sister’s love of dresses and finery and needlework, the way she simpered over the boy that would kill her father.  “I hate her,” Arya had whispered once as they sat around the fire. “She’s stupid and beautiful and she got Father killed.”

Gendry had withheld judgment at the time. “And what could she have said to the king,” he had asked, “that would have made any difference? You said Joffrey was a liar and a brute.”  He didn’t know the lady, then, but he had seen what men with power did to women, and he didn’t imagine she’d had many choices.

The Lady of Winterfell is nothing like her sister, and nothing like her sister described so many years ago.  Beautiful, yes-- Gendry isn’t blind-- but with eyes as sharp as hers, she is no one’s fool.

Lady Stark steps the workbench, and runs a gloved finger over the back of the running direwolf, and a smile flickers at the edge of her mouth.  “Is this your work, Lord Baratheon?” she asks.

“It is, my lady,” he says.  The title sounds natural coming from her lips, but it sits uneasy on his shoulders.  He forces himself to stand straight, and not hunch inwards.

“You have quite the gift,” she says.  And then, “If you have a moment, we might walk over to the godswood, and you could take note of the leaves.”

“Of course, my lady,” he says, because it wasn’t a request, however graceful she made it sound.  

She waits as he trades his leather apron for his cloak and gloves, and says, “My brother tells me you grew up in King’s Landing.  I’m sure the cold has been difficult,” before leading the way slowly across the chaos of the courtyard. Two men at arms follow at a discreet distance.

“It’s a change, my lady,” he says, glancing at her.  The lady’s face is impassive. “But you spent time in the south,” he says, testing the heat of the blade.  “I’m sure you understand.”

“I did,” she says, and leads him through the gate, into the stillness of the godswood.  The path is clear and even, and there are worn wheeled tracks along the center. “But I was born here, Lord Baratheon,” she continues, and Gendry hears the gentle stress on _born here_ like a hammer on steel.  “I think we children of the North must be born with ice in our veins.”  Around them, the trees bow under a heavy quilt of snow, and it seems to Gendry that the colors of the forest have drained to smoke and ash and shadow, and the only visible brightness lies in Lady Stark’s thick copper braids.  

“I was born in a tavern,” Gendry offers.  “Far as I know, the place had no effect on what runs in my blood.  My lady,” he says. Stops a few paces behind her. “You didn’t ask me here to see any leaves, and I’m no good at saying one thing when I mean another.  What is it you wanted to say to me?”

The Lady of Winterfell hums, soft, and it might be a laugh.  “I knew your father when I was a girl, did you know?” she asks.  Gendry shakes his head, though if he had considered it-- of course she would have.  She had lived in the Red Keep with her father the Hand, and been betrothed to Joffrey.  Certainly she would have known him. “I didn’t much like him,” she says, and begins walking along the path again, and Gendry keeps pace.  “He was fat, and drunk, quick to anger, and he was cruel to his Queen.”

“His Queen was Cersei Lannister,” Gendry observes.  “She is cruel enough without him.”

Lady Stark says, “Yes, she is.  But I think your father would have been cruel to any Queen of his, no matter who they were.  Even my aunt. He was not a man to treat women well.”

“You’ll hear no argument from me on that point, my lady,” he says, and she nods.

“Do you have many memories of your mother?” she asks, and he says, “Some.”  She waits, and Gendry says, “With your leave, my lady-- they are mine.”

“Of course,” she replies, a faint flush crossing her cheeks.  “Forgive me. I only asked, because--,” and she shakes her head.  “No,” she says, and her shoulders straighten. “You have been direct with me. I will attempt the same. I asked because I was curious, and because the circumstance of your birth might be viewed as a weakness.  And as House Stark and House Baratheon have been allies before, what is your weakness might also be mine.” She meets his eyes, and there-- she is very like her sister, after all. Steel in her look, she says, “I do not like feeling weak.”

He feels his mouth turn upwards at the corner.  “My birth is no stranger than thousands of others, my lady, including your brother’s.  Wrong side of the blanket, is all. And I don’t know how a dead tavern girl’s history could prove much of a weakness to you.”  Her careful steps hesitate at the mention of her brother, but her face remains placid as she leads him into the heart tree’s clearing.

“There,” Lady Stark says with a tilt of her head.  “Weirwood leaves.”

They are brilliant and frightening, the red of a still-beating heart, and they brand the snow and branches and steel-colored sky like bloody hands.  He has never seen the like.

“Gods,” he says, and takes a hesitant step forward.  There is a glassy pond, deep and steaming at the weirwood’s roots; it must be the hot springs used by Bran the Builder.  The face on the tree is lined with a red so dark it is nearly black, and Gendry thinks for a moment of washing the dried blood from Arya’s face.

“Old gods,” Lady Stark says, absent.  “I didn’t used to like this place. I still don’t, sometimes,” she says, and her eyes stray to a bare snowy patch some feet away.  There is nothing there, but Gendry would wager something was, once. Or someone was. “But it is a place with meaning,” she says, and her voice is thick.  “And that matters.”

“Is it true you can’t lie in front of a heart tree?” Gendry asks. He remembers hearing that, once.  Doesn’t know who it was who told him. It had seemed foolish at the time. He isn’t so sure, now.

“I don’t know,” she says, and raises her eyebrows.  “Do you intend to try?”

“Not at the moment,” he says, and crouches awkwardly to pick up a frozen leaf from the snow beneath his feet.  The edges are sawtoothed between the five points, he notes, and a web of veins honeycombs the surface. It will take delicate edgework, but the surface pattern should be easy enough.  Satisfied, he lays the leaf back down-- it seems wrong to take it-- and pushes himself up.

“I am glad to see you are improving,” Lady Stark says.  She nods towards his leg. “Wolkan was afraid it might carry you off.”  She glances over at the men at arms behind her and says, “We have lost too many good people, of late.”

“I’m lucky he found me. And that he didn’t want to take the leg,” Gendry says with a grimace.

“He did want to bleed you,” the lady tells him, and he blanches.  Thinks of the Red Woman, of blades and leeches and the heat of humiliation in his blood.  Lady Stark watches him carefully. “My sister told him not to,” she says, even. “Said you wouldn’t like it.”

“No one likes being bled,” he mutters.  He hadn’t known Arya was aware of his illness. He doesn’t know what to make of it.

“I don’t suppose so, no,” Lady Stark agrees, her voice pleasant.  “But my sister was quite insistent. How well do you know her, Lord Baratheon?” she asks, and Gendry finds himself at a loss.

“I--,” he begins, and doesn’t know what to say.  He thinks: _I know that she only cried over your father when the others weren’t looking.  I know that she prefers snake to rat, but she’ll eat either before she’ll touch dog. I know she has scars she ought not have survived, that she kisses like she is discovering new worlds, that the cradle of her hips fit in my hands like she was the only weapon I was meant to hold.  I know she must think I am a fool, and that I do not understand her, and she may be right._  “I don’t think I know her well at all, my lady,” Gendry says at length, and-- at her raised eyebrow-- continues, “I knew her as a girl, after the death of your father.  I was glad to see her safe, when I came to Winterfell.” There is no lie in that, he thinks. The face on the weirwood remains impassive, though he glances at it nervously.

“I would guess you know her a little better than that,” Lady Stark says, wry.  “She was down in the smithy often enough. Many people have told me so.”

Gendry feels his ears go hot and his hands go cold. “She is a friend, my lady,” he tries, and Lady Stark raises a hand, the black leather bold against the white of the grove.  

“Peace, Lord Baratheon,” she says.  “I do not understand my sister-- I never have, our ways are so strange to each other.  But I hope I know now that Arya does as Arya wants, and it serves her well. I’ve learned to care less for gossip,” she says, stepping to the edge of the hot spring.  She looks into its depths, and Gendry wonders if she sees something he doesn’t. “I would be a fool indeed to still think a woman’s worth is tied to who she has or has not bedded.”

 _Fuck_ , Gendry thinks, bleak.  Some part of him remembers a story about the barbaric North, and blood sacrifices to the Old Gods buried at the base of heart trees, and he wonders briefly if Lady Stark has brought him here for such a purpose.  No, he thinks, the Starks pass judgment in the open, and they do not hide the bodies. He makes himself look Lady Stark in the eyes. “I would have no one think less of her,” he says, his voice low. He is surprised by how fierce he sounds.

Lady Stark raises her eyebrows.  “Nor I,” she says. “You are-- fond of her, then?” she asks, and he says, “Yes,” and it is a surprise, how easy the word is to say.  How glad he is to say it.

Lady Stark hums, and says, “It might be a good match--”

“No, my lady,” he says, sharp.  Swallows against the bile in his throat, and says, quieter, “She would be unhappy.”

The Lady of Winterfell is silent.  “Ah,” she says, her voice more gentle than he has heard it.  “If that is the way of it, I am sorry.”

He laughs, an empty thing.  “No more so than I am,” he says.  “It was a damn fool thing to ask her.”

Lady Stark’s forehead furrows.  “It was not,” she disagrees. “If you care for my sister, and respect her, and wish to be with her, it was not foolish at all.”

Gendry shakes his head.  “Wasn’t thinking about her,” he admits, and the barbed truth of it stings.  “I mean, of course I was, but-- she is lovely and brave and clever, your sister, and nothing scares her, and the Queen had just made me something I’m not, and I didn’t know what to do with it.  I asked because I-- care for her,” he says, “but also because I was afraid,” he says, stumbling through his explanation. “And more than a little drunk,” he admits with a shrug.

“As was most of Winterfell, that night,” the lady says with a small smile.  “I think we ran through all the winter ale.” She tilts her head up to look at the leaves above her.  Reaches up and plucks one. “Well,” she says.

“Well,” he echoes.  He has no idea what she might be thinking.

Lady Stark holds out the weirwood leaf.  “The gods won’t mind you having it, I don’t think,” she says.  He takes it, the scarlet fingers curling in his palm like fire.  “I know you think you don’t know Arya well, Lord Baratheon,” she says, “but I think you might understand her more than anyone else.”

“I don’t think that is enough,” he says, and then dares, “And it’s just Gendry, my lady.”

“Lord Gendry,” she tries, and he wrinkles his nose.  

“I don’t think I’m a lord,” he says.  “Not if the Queen doesn’t take King’s Landing, and maybe not even then. She doesn’t have the power to make me lord of something she doesn’t yet control. Maester Wolkan said as much.”

Lady Stark looks towards the heart tree, towards the red-carved eyes staring endlessly at Winterfell.  “Power is odd, isn’t it,” she says, absent. “Someone says the words, and others act as though they matter, and suddenly they do. Well,” she says. Turns back towards the path, and says, “Come. Lord or not, I’m sure I’ve kept you from your work long enough.”

He follows, and they are quiet together, walking back along the path, their boots crunching through the crust of hard-frozen snow.  Gendry thinks it is colder, now, the further away from the heart tree they walk. They pass through the gate to the small courtyard, and it is as though his head is breaking above the waves into a storm-- the noise and smoke and movement and life are nearly painful after the silence of the godswood.

“It is always a little strange, coming back,” Lady Stark says, watching him stumble a little on the cobbles.  “You do get used to it, though.”

“I don’t know how that’s possible, my lady,” he says, his head still at sea. _Gods_ , he thinks, and then, _old gods_.  He sees, for a moment, the twisting roots of the weirwood tree around the deep black of the hot spring, the pommel of a smallsword, white steel and silver, dragonglass and red, red leaves on the grip.  He has no idea how to make such a thing. He is certain he will learn, though it might take him years.

Lady Stark crosses the courtyard with him, and pauses outside the smithy.  “I wasn’t just being polite,” she says. “Before, when I spoke of your work.  It is beautiful. You _do_ have a gift.”

“No, my lady,” Gendry says, though the image in his head is sharp and true like a good blade. It is nothing he could imagine, he knows. It doesn’t feel like his; it comes from somewhere else, and he itches to find a stick of charcoal, to try to get it out of his head and onto something real.  “I don’t have a gift. I have a trade. I spent a decade over flame until I was strong enough to bear the work, and good enough to keep from starving. Any skill I have, I worked for,” he tells her, growing more certain with every word. “I got enough scars, learning it. I’ll not pretend I was born with it in my blood.”

Lady Stark smiles, and it is no small thing: it is brilliant and canny and too knowing by half.  “You know,” she says, “I think that is the first lie you have told me, my lord.”

* * *

“What did the lady want?” Polym asks as they lean against the workbench and eat the wedge of cheese and onion and small loaf of dark bread the kitchen sent for supper.  It is plain fare, but filling.

“I don’t know,” he says.  Takes a bite of bread, and swallows.  “An ally in the south, maybe,” he acknowledges.  He has no intention of mentioning Arya to Polym. That doesn’t belong to him.

“You’d ‘ave to be Lord of Storm’s End for that,” Polym says, and waggles his eyebrows.  It looks ridiculous with the eye patch.

“The Queen would have to be the Queen, first,” he says, and wonders what it means that he hopes she isn’t.

**Author's Note:**

> Since I gotta:
> 
> 1\. Sansa is a hell of a lot more fun to write than I thought she might be.  
> 2\. The Old Gods have a sword they want Gendry to make, and you'd better believe he's going to.  
> 3\. I like the idea of Sansa knowing about Arya and Gendry, and being remarkably chill about it.
> 
> And also:
> 
> 4\. Sansa is chill about it because she is Good at Politics, and you'd better believe she thinks Gendry and Arya hooking up is Potentially Useful (and yes also because she loves her sister, but: Potentially Useful!).


End file.
